


When the Winds Begin to Sing

by regshoe



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Magic, Nature, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 14:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regshoe/pseuds/regshoe
Summary: ‘We do not know why in 1202 he quarrelled with Winter and banished it from his kingdom, so that for four years Northern England enjoyed continual Summer.’—Jonathan Strange in The Edinburgh Review, 1815.These events are remembered in rather more detail, however, in Northern England itself.





	When the Winds Begin to Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raven (singlecrow)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/gifts).



> I also love the stories and folktales about the Raven King, and I hope you enjoy this one :D
> 
> Many thanks to sharkie for beta reading!

It was long ago, of course, but in the olden days the seasons went on from year to year much as they do now. So it was no great surprise when, that September, the hawthorns of Southern England began to turn from green to brown, the winds of Southern England began to blow a little colder than they had done, and the last petals of the last roses of Southern England fell to the ground. 

It was a little more surprising when these things failed to happen in Northern England. September passed into October, and still the days were warm, the leaves were green, and the Northern English people began to grow very puzzled indeed.

The wild geese, flying in their straggling skeins from far-off northern lands to winter on the estuaries of the Tees and the Ribble, were baffled to find when they arrived that it was not winter at all: the green grass still grew long around the water, and butterflies still fluttered over the meadows. One Goose, a sensible creature, decided to go and visit a distant relation of hers, who lived on a farm near Knaresborough, to ask if he knew what had brought about these strange conditions.

By now, rumours had begun to go around, and the Farmyard Goose—who had overheard the farmer’s daughters, two wise young ladies, discussing these rumours—told his cousin confidently that it was all because of the King’s magic. 

‘You know that he is rather a strange person,’ he said. ‘Well, it appears that he is distracted by something—a new spell he is inventing, or a book he is writing, or some love affair—and has entirely forgotten that it ought to be winter, and so he has not invited Winter into the kingdom, as he should have done.’

‘But why do his advisers not remind him?’ asked the Wild Goose.

‘They are afraid that he will be angry, and cast some terrible magic spell upon them,’ said the Farmyard Goose, whose knowledge of politics was considerable.

‘Hmm! Well, it all seems very silly to me,’ said the Wild Goose, and she flew back to the fields where her husband and children were awaiting what news she might bring.

Speculation abounded as to the real cause of Winter’s failure to appear. Everyone in the kingdom agreed with the Farmyard Goose that it must have something to do with the King’s magic, but no one seemed to agree on what exactly this might be. No official announcement had been made, and the King himself was particularly reclusive that year, and so for some time no one was able to find out. Meanwhile, life went on. The people living on the north bank of the Humber made a tidy profit in ferry trips and souvenirs for travellers coming over from the midland counties and marvelling at the immediate change of season.

The truth was rather dreadful. When, as he does every year, Winter had first come down from the icy fastnesses where he hides in summer, the King had met him in Newcastle and boasted to him that he, the greatest magician who had ever lived, had devised some magic by which he could command the seasons. He could, if he wished (he said), make it to be winter in the middle of summer, or summer when it ought to be winter, and then with a wave of his hand turn the weather back again. 

Now Winter is a proud and cold-hearted young man, and he took great offence at this. ‘You have conquered a kingdom in Faerie, and half a one in England,’ he said to the King, ‘and, in your great rank and power, it seems you have deluded yourself into thinking you possess a greater power yet. My lord, if you attempt so to rule _me_ and my kin, you shall swiftly discover your mistake.’

The King, as you may imagine, was not best pleased to hear himself called deluded. ‘If I am too accustomed to power,’ he said in answer, ‘you are surely too accustomed to have things your own way, for no king on Earth has before dared to gainsay you. Take care, for I am not as the kings of old.’

From here things descended into quite a quarrel, and it ended in the King’s banishing Winter from his kingdom for a year. Winter laughed and, as he turned to depart from Northern England, told the Raven King that he would live to regret this foolish command. 

‘And yet,’ said the King to himself afterwards, ‘he went when I said that he would go, and has stayed away; so it seems I was right.’

It was, perhaps, little wonder that no one at the King’s court in Newcastle particularly wished to make his subjects aware of this situation. However, after a few months had passed, William of Lanchester, the king’s seneschal, decided that some explanation was required. And so he went out to address the people, and issued a proclamation that Winter was banished from the kingdom for a year, and advised them to go on with their lives as best they could.

Christmas came round with the weather of high summer, and the holly and the ivy no longer bore the crown amongst the trees for their greenness. The would-be midwinter was followed by no sweet spring, but merely a continuance of the same long summer. All this the people—who, after almost a hundred years of the Raven King’s rule, had learnt to bear with his occasional eccentricities—tolerated with more or less equanimity. But not a few of them began to miss the old turning of the seasons, and secretly looked forward to the autumn to come.

Imagine their surprise, then, when this too did not arrive. Once again September drew on into October, and the days were still long and bright, and there was no cold north wind. The land and the people slowly realised that they were to face another year of Eternal Summer. None of them had expected this. Even the King had not expected it, and as soon as he heard that Winter had made his usual appearance at the court of King John Lackland of Southern England, passing the North by entirely, he stormed off down the King’s Roads that he made behind the mirrors, and found Winter, and demanded to know what he meant by this.

‘You have made it quite clear,’ Winter explained coolly, ‘that I am not wanted in your land, and so I have decided to stay away—to teach you a lesson. I will not come and go at your whim, no matter how powerful a magician you may be.’

The Raven King was greatly angered by this insolence, and told Winter that the kingdom could doubtless do very well without him for another year, and so left him.

Winter would not relent as easily as that, however, and the sorry state of affairs went on for another three years. William of Lanchester was at his wits’ end with complaints from people who could no longer tell when they should plant their crops or bring their sheep down into the dales. The fairies at the King’s court tutted and said loudly that such a disastrous dispute would never be tolerated in _their_ kingdoms. And all the while the King himself remained shut away in his house in Newcastle, doing magic, and would not speak to anyone about Winter at all.

Now, it was some years before this that the great magician Thomas Godbless had given the King a gift: he brought the trees and hills, the wind and the rain of England, and laid them before the King. The grand people at the court had thought this rather an odd thing to do. They had discussed it for a while as an example of Godbless’s eccentricity and probable untrustworthiness, and had eventually forgotten the thing entirely. But the trees and hills, the wind and the rain remembered. 

They had made promises to the King, and must keep them. His magic was the magic of the lark that springs, singing with joy, up towards the heavens; the magic of the ivy that is green at midwinter and the oak that is the deepest green at midsummer; the magic of the hawthorn tree that grows, gnarled and withered, on the highest and bleakest moor. It was because of these things that he was King, and they did not forget it.

But now, after four years of continual Summer, the wild things of the kingdom of Northern England were suffering grievously. The trees and wildflowers were in a terrible muddle with their leaves and blossoms; the rivers ran dry for want of rain and snow to feed them. The hills of Northumberland watched their Scottish sisters with sadness and envy, when at the proper season the heather bloomed brilliantly purple all down their slopes. There was no longer any such season for them.

The Wild Goose, returning again to Northern England, found its meadows once more green under a summer sun, and met a strange little bird swooping above the ground where she was resting.

‘Who are you?’ she asked the strange bird, as it flickered its deep blue wings over the grass.

‘I am a Swallow,’ said the little bird, ‘and who are you?’

The Goose introduced herself. ‘But how is it that we have never met before, if we are both English birds?’

The Swallow alighted in a willow tree, ruffled her feathers and said solemnly, ‘You say that you fly to England in winter; I and my kind fly away at the end of summer. Now that it is always summer, none of us know when to come or go—and so we are here at the same time, when I ought to be in Africa or you in the high Arctic.’

And though they did not regret the meeting, for the two birds became great friends, they yet mourned for the old happy rhythms of their lives that had been lost.

The King, in his pride—and by now, one imagines, his embarrassment—had made himself unreachable by any of his human subjects (some of whom would quite like to have told him all they thought of his actions and their consequences, king or no). Seeing this, the rocks and the rivers and the birds realised that they must speak for themselves, as well as for the people. And so they did.

They arrayed themselves before the King, though he would have hidden away. They addressed him in their own language, which is older than any human tongue, but which all magicians know and understand, and they reminded him of the promises he and they had made.

Said the Ivy, ‘My stems are all withered and weak. If there is no Winter I shall not be strong enough to bind the enemies of England, as I promised thee.’

Said the Hawthorn, ‘Where are my green leaves of summer, and where the red haws of autumn, and the bare thorns of winter? If there are no seasons I cannot answer these questions or any, as I promised thee.’

Said the Rain, ‘I lie over the hills in winter. If there is no Winter I shall not fall on England long enough to wash away its sorrows, as I promised thee.’

Said the Wild Goose, ‘We cannot write magic across the October sky, if it is not autumn.’

Said the Bluebells, ‘We cannot write magic across the woods in April, if it is not spring.’

And finally the Raven spoke a word, a silhouette against the sky, and the King understood.

The very next day, the King set off once again down the roads behind the mirrors, and he found Winter. He told him of the misery and confusion of the wild things, and of how they had spoken to him.

Winter listened, coldly silent. ‘So your hills, your trees and your birds wish me to return, I see,’ he said at last. ‘Do you?’

And John Uskglass said, ‘Yes.’

And so they agreed to put aside their quarrel—for both saw that, more than they had done any wrong to each other, they had done a great wrong to the land, and to the magic that is always beneath it. Winter said that he would forget old wrongs, and return to Northern England once again.

The day after that, snow fell on Northern England for the first time in four years. The trees stretched out their arms to the grey sky in welcome. Little birds watched the snow fall, huddled up together on their sheltered branches. The hills slept contentedly under their accustomed blanket.

That winter was a very jolly one in Northern England. After four years of uncertainty as to when the next winter might arrive, the people had stored up plenty of food and fuel against the cold weather, and, this being now such a novelty to them, they enjoyed it immensely. Little children who had never seen snow or ice before went skating on the Tyne, and built snowmen in the meadows. At Christmas the holly and the ivy returned to their triumphant place in the wreaths. 

When, at last, the spring arrived, the people were as glad as ever, for the mild weather, the new flowers, and the first swallows and cuckoos are all the more lovely for their freshness each year. And in the years that came after, the wild things of the land flourished and were glad, and visitors to Northern England would remark on how lovely were its green woods or its snow-covered moors. His old alliances renewed and made stronger, the King set himself to devise new and ever more wonderful magic.

The Raven King was, without a doubt, the greatest magician who ever lived, but—as Winter is so fond of reminding us—there are limits to every power, be it that of the greatest magicians, and even kings cannot always do exactly as they please. Ever since, when they see a hawthorn blooming in December or a stray fieldfare in May, the people of Northern England have remembered the time when their King of old placed his own power in such peril over such a silly quarrel. And they remember how wise it is for such a king never to lose sight of by whose leave he rules.


End file.
